Okay, 2026 should be the year Illinois lawmakers do something about the housing shortage

February 19, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Governor JB Pritzker announced his plan to address the state’s housing shortage in 2026. This is the third year in a row I’ve written about proposed legislation to unlock new housing in Illinois, and this should be the year – the governor and General Assembly leadership are fully aligned since they, together, introduced bills cover six major land use, zoning, and housing development reforms.

Pritzker’s budget address on Wednesday covered a wide range of housing issues in four minutes:

  • the size of the shortage (227,000 new homes are needed by 2030 to keep up with demand)
  • everything is too damned expensive! rent is too high!
  • not enough homes are being built
  • redlining played a role in housing being built less often in certain areas
  • regulations inhibit new homes and small homes from getting built
  • bureaucratic red tape
  • parking mandates require too much parking that are unused and expensive

Watch the full 4-minute housing speech, part of his hourlong budget address.

I propose some non-exhaustive reasons why the average Illinoisan might want to support these reforms:

  • There are 6% year-over-year rent increases which is making it hard for Illinois to be a competitive place to maintain its population and its services. Population loss results in higher costs for everyone because services and pensions are paid for by fewer people.
  • I want Illinois to lose as few Congressional seats as possible in 2030.
  • It encourages new development which spreads the tax burden onto more taxpayers and lowers it for any given taxpayer.

It’s a whole set of reforms to lower housing costs

To resolve these issues, Gov. Pritzker is working with legislative leaders in the Illinois House and Illinois Senate to adopt a package of bills:

Impact Fee Modernization (SB 4062, Castro)

The state would create formulas that set maximum impact fees, relative to the impact (i.e. number of students, domestic water and sewer, etc.) and incorporate certain unique contexts, to establish certainty for home builders. Municipalities, include those with home rule authority, would have to adopt the formulas within 30 months after the bill’s effective date.

Third Party Review (SB 4063, Ellman)

In cases where a municipality cannot review a building permit quickly enough an applicant could hire a third-party reviewer. The municipality would have to complete its initial plan review within 15 business days for a one or two-family house, and within 30 business days for “any multifamily, mixed-use, or commercial project”. Each subsequent review cycle would need to be completed within 10 business days.

Additionally, the bill would set inspection standards, specifically requiring a municipality to perform inspections within two business days of the request. Applicants could also use third-party inspector if the municipality does not meet the standard. Municipalities cannot charge additional fees if an applicant exercises this right, and qualified third-party reviewers and inspectors would not be permitted to charge more than the municipality’s fee.

Finally, the bill sets qualification, conflict of interest, and auditing standards, and the bill would also apply to home rule municipalities.

Legalizing Middle Housing (SB 4060, Hunter)

This is a big deal and is the key to unlock the solution to the housing shortage in Illinois. It would allow multifamily housing as of right on all lots that have a minimum area of 2,500 s.f. (To give some context the most common residential lot size in Chicago is 3,125 s.f. and in Oak Park the average residential lot ranges between 4,000 s.f. and 13,000 s.f. depending on the zoning district.)

The bill would permit between two and eight units of housing per lot in a residential zoning district, depending on the size of the lot. It would also permit new housing types that most municipalities ban:

  • Duplexes (a.k.a. two-flats)
  • Triplexes
  • Fourplexes
  • Cottage clusters
  • Townhouses
  • Stacked-flat plexes
  • Attached courtyard housing
  • Detached courtyard housing. This would allow a front house and an equal size rear house, which Chicago has vintage examples of and some architecture firms have proposed as part of the Missing Middle Infill Housing initiative, but the Chicago zoning code does not permit)

What are some potential impacts?

In Chicago, there are 14,148 vacant lots that are zoned in a way that bans multi-family housing. If 5 percent of those were developed each year with a two-flat that would reduce the city’s housing shortage by 1,415 homes annually. (Chicago has seen an average of 4,357 new homes permitted from 2023-2025.) These zoning districts are pretty broadly distributed in Chicago, and overlap with all kinds of school attendance boundaries and near all kinds of amenities.

In Naperville, there are 35,449 (57 percent of the parcels in the city and 86 percent of parcels that allow residential uses) lots that ban multi-family housing. A minority of those would be improved to have two-family houses which would go a long way to increasing opportunity for Illinoisans (while also increase Naperville’s property tax revenues).

That’s almost too simplistic (and perhaps a bit optimistic) because the bill would permit more housing types than Chicago currently allows, like the detached courtyard housing – these new options would respond to the desire for lower-cost detached housing, increasing or maintaining the density on blocks where deconversions and teardowns are common.

The need for housing extends beyond Chicago and Oak Park. I ran this exercise here because it’s where I have the easiest access to high quality property and zoning data. Every town needs additional housing and additional housing types – for its existing residents and for future residents. Every town with transit service especially needs more housing, because more people should be allowed to take advantage of that service and that public investment.

Parking Reform (SB 4064, Cervantes)

Parking mandates would be eliminated for several uses:

  • individual dwelling units that have an area smaller than 1,500 s.f.
  • affordable housing developments
  • assisted living developments
  • ground floor non-residential uses in mixed-use buildings
  • when converting a building from non-residential to residential use

The standards would also apply in home rule communities.

Single Stair Reform (SB 4061, Feigenholtz)

Residential buildings up to six stories, with a maximum of four dwelling units per floor, an automatic sprinkler system, and automatic door closers, would be permitted to have a single interior exit stairway (“single stair”). Small multifamily buildings with a single means of egress are as safe or safer than those with more than one.

The benefits improve quality of life by making it easier to design multi-bedroom and family-size homes with additional windows for more natural light, and inset porches (allowing for cross-breezes!) because space isn’t needed for a corridor to connect every unit to a second stair way. Homes are closer to the exit in these buildings.

Further reading:

ADUs (bill number forthcoming)

Do I even have to say what this is about? The bill would permit accessory dwelling units in all zoning districts that permit residential uses. The state ADU bill, as written in HB5626, could possibly invalidate the labor requirements for coach houses in Chicago (emphasis added):

(1) Each municipality shall permit accessory dwelling units in all zoning districts that permit single-family dwellings without additional requirements for lot size, setbacks, aesthetic requirements, design review requirements, frontage, space limitations, or other controls beyond those required for single-family dwelling units without an accessory dwelling unit.

The House has a single omnibus: HB 5626.

Volunteers and Rep. Buckner
AHIL volunteers at the Springfield Amtrak station

Abundant Housing Illinois volunteers were in Springfield yesterday to listen to Governor Pritzker’s budget speech and to push for bold housing solutions to reduce the housing shortage – evident by continually rising prices – that persists across the state.

The new bills that Governor Pritzker’s office announced today – collectively called BUILD – will have a big impact on permitting new starter homes and allowing multi-family housing all over the state, among other changes to speed up housing construction. These bills will have the biggest effect on reducing housing costs when passed collectively.

Join Abundant Housing Illinois for the next lobby day.

Choosing NITA board members: it needs the best people

February 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

It’s super important to the success of the forthcoming Northern Illinois Transit Authority1 (NITA, pronounced “neat-uh”) that is has new board members who are forward-thinking, collaborative, and invested in high-quality transit service. Collaboration is almost an inherently necessary trait, as 17 of the 20 new board members will also serve on either the Pace, Metra, or Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) boards! A mind for the future is also obligatory because NITA will take over planning responsibilities from the three service boards and decide on service patterns and expansions with the region in mind, using new-to-the-region operations and capital funding.

The Blue Line to Forest Park desperately needs an overhaul to eliminate slow zones and create stations that are comfortable for riders. Connect 290 Blue is an interagency effort to consolidate planning for the Blue Line overhaul and the reconstruction of the Eisenhower Expressway.

There is going to be an estimated $1.2 billion in new funding for transit service and another $180 million annually for capital projects; I want the new funds to be invested well2 and I think that starts with a well-formed NITA board3.

The authority will materialize on September 1. Good board members should be nominated by their respective choosers and confirmed by the Illinois Senate well in advance.

Mayor Johnson will get to appoint five members to the NITA board, similar to how the mayor of Chicago appoints five members to the Regional Transportation Authority board. The RTA will dissolve on September 1. The same goes for Cook County President Preckwinkle, who will appoint five members to NITA, with “advice and consent” of the 17 commissioners.

New to the process will be Governor Pritzker, who will get to appoint five members to the NITA board. The Illinois governor did not get to appoint any of the RTA board members.

The last key attribute of a NITA board member is their personal investment in transit.

Drake Warren is running for a seat on the Cook County board and at the Abundant Housing Illinois happy hour last week he said that as a commissioner, to ensure that NITA provides the best connectivity for Cook County residents, he will support only the nominations of people who actually ride transit in the region.

This is what Drake said (which is in the video above):

Cook County is responsible for putting some of the upcoming NITA board members on the board, and I have some non-negotiables [in order] to have my support for appointment.

Somebody has to be a transit user and have relevant expertise, whether that’s legal, whether that’s technical, operational, or otherwise.

I’m not going to have a discussion around support unless they can meet those criteria because transit is one of the most important ways for how our city fulfills its function of connecting people.

I think whether one rides transit is a reasonable and preferred heuristic to gauge board member eligibility. So that’s another reason why I think AHIL’s endorsement of Drake Warren was the right call.

Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), based in Chicago, adds six of their own criteria – vision, regional perspective, financial experience, consistent and recent transit use, commitment to values, and being a transit champion – for good board member choices. They offered this in an open letter to all of the people required by law to appoint NITA board members.

Ensure your voter registration is up to date and request a Vote By Mail ballot.

Footnotes

  1. I think that Austin Busch wrote the best summary of NITA (SB2111), for Streetsblog Chicago. ↩︎
  2. Speaking of good choices in spending: the transit TIF that is funding the local match for the CTA’s Red Purple Modernization Phase 1, which was completed in summer 2025, will likely have generated the necessary amount of monies in 2028. CTA does not yet have a plan for Phase 2 and should not automatically have access to transit TIF funding. City That Works argues that the transit TIF should be terminated at that time rather than continue to divert money from the different city and county governments. ↩︎
  3. Diverging Approach writes about some of what the new board’s mandate comprises. ↩︎
a collage of 7 photos on 7 occasions where food scrap waste dropped off at a collection site in the City of Chicago

I’ve been composting using the city’s food scrap dropoff program for two years now

January 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Data summary:

  • 13 total dropoffs
  • Timespan: October 18, 2023 to December 26, 2025 (about 26 months)
  • Total volume: 13 × 101 oz = 1,313 ounces (about 10.3 gallons)
  • Average frequency: roughly once every 2 months

Last month I made the thirteenth trip to a City of Chicago food scrap dropoff site at 1758 S Clark St. After two years I think it’s a good moment to count how long and how often I’ve been dropping off scraps for composting. I started collecting food waste soon after I learned the city was starting the program, and I dropped off the first collection on October 16, 2023. This means I’ve been hauling my trusty 101-ounce IKEA HÅLLBAR plastic bin to this spot for just over two years now.

That food waste decomposing in landfills causes a significant amount of methane release into the air and that methane traps more heat than CO2. Although there is still a lot more CO2 than methane released I thought that I can do a little more, and the site being over a mile away means I’m forced to go for a short bike ride even if I don’t otherwise feel like it.

What do the numbers say

  • Over 26 months, I’ve diverted about 1,313 ounces of food scraps from the landfill—that’s about 10.3 gallons of mostly banana peels, coffee grounds, and eggshells (I am using the volume of the bin rather than weights I’ve measured)
  • On average, I make the trip roughly every two months, though the intervals have varied quite a bit.
  • Looking back at my photo timestamps, I notice some interesting patterns. In 2024, there was a long gap between my July dropoff and my December one—over four months.
  • But 2025 has been different. I’ve made six trips this year alone, with intervals as short as 34 days between visits.

The Clark Street dropoff isn’t particularly close to my apartment, and I’ll admit that’s been a barrier. On days when I don’t feel like making the trip, that container sits in my fridge a little longer, and gets full to a point where I divert food waste to the trash. Curbside pickup would change everything—but until that happens, I’m still glad the city offers the dropoff sites.

Two-flat journal 10: the project has a permit and basement digging has begun

December 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I don’t feel like explaining the ups and downs of the last six months, which is when my building permit application was resubmitted. I’ll commemorate the occasion by sharing these photos of the new footings that have been excavated.

A new steel beam – actually three segments – will be installed in the basement, supported by two new posts on these two new footings. The orange lines in the footing holes represent the top of the future floor slab, indicating a 18″ dig-down.

The holes cannot be filled in until a city building inspector comes by. After they are filled in, and a post is installed, more excavation will occur on the perimeter to do underpinning. This will extend the depth of the house’s foundation to support it for another one hundred years, and probably prevent more sinking and shifting.

Modular townhouses built by Kinnex for Structured Development.

How Chicago could maintain its housing affordability status

December 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

An op-ed by Steffany Bahamon, Jasmine Omeke and Steven Vance (Abundant Housing Illinois co-leads) published in Crain’s Chicago Business.

Of all the major cities in the United States, Chicago provides the greatest value, with robust amenities and culture without correlated housing costs. But if Chicago wants to retain that status, some things need to change. Rents in Chicago are growing faster than the country’s average, and the inventory of housing for sale in the Chicago area is at an 11-year low. In September, Redfin published data showing asking rents had increased 11% year over year. New construction is lagging, too. When we look at new homes permitted per year in Chicago, we see a sharp drop in the number of permits for detached houses and multifamily buildings in the last three years.

There isn’t enough housing available for the new households moving into Illinois or relocating between cities and neighborhoods. Plus, households today have fewer people, requiring more homes to support the population. The Illinois Economic Policy Institute estimates the state is short 142,000 homes. Recent Census Bureau data shows that Chicago hit a demographic milestone: The city now has more households than ever before, even compared to 1960, when the city had about 1 million more inhabitants.

Compounding the problem is that people’s incomes are not keeping up with rents. In Cook County, wages went up 4% from 2024-2025, and across Illinois they went up only 3.2%.

Household growth and rising rents are clear indicators of demand and evidence of the need for more homes. By increasing the housing supply, Chicago can maintain an affordability that both entices people to live here and makes it practicable to do so. No amenity or cultural offering can compensate for an inability to make ends meet, and a failure to anticipate growth prohibits growth.

The climbing cost of housing is a main reason why 450 people have joined Abundant Housing Illinois, and bringing down costs is why they help in the political fight to show there is support for more housing. In 2025 about 50 Abundant Housing Illinois volunteers from Chicago and Champaign traveled to Springfield on multiple occasions to meet their legislators and talk about this statewide housing shortage. We specifically advocated for HB 1813 and HB 1814, two bills introduced in the state Legislature that would have permitted accessory dwelling units (ADUs), like granny flats and coach houses, across Illinois and two-, three-, and four-unit houses in many municipalities, respectively.

Our volunteers, most of whom live in Chicago and want to stay in Chicago, will again support these, and other bills, in 2026. These two bills, which are necessary to reduce — and yet still insufficient to ameliorate — the housing shortage, did not get approved.

And it’s clear that action needs to happen at the state level because the problem is broader than any one city. The Chicago market for home prices extends across the suburban border, where home prices are also increasing at a similar rate to the city average. Chicago can take unilateral action on housing within its borders. Starting last year, some alderpersons have collaborated with the city’s planning department to proactively upzone neighborhood corridors — on all sides — to allow more housing and allow it to be built sooner. And in September, the City Council adopted a permanent ADU program.

Organizing a sufficient response from the multitude of governments across the Chicago metropolitan area to allow enough housing at the rate that it’s needed is much more difficult. Still, even more permission for new housing isn’t enough. Additional reforms are also necessary everywhere in Illinois: standardizing which fees are assessed and in what amounts; curbing delays and additional costs from project-by-project exactions for perceived impacts that aren’t based on empirical standards; and amending building code requirements, like not always requiring a second stairway, as Seattle and New York City have been doing for decades.

We’ll see legislators in Springfield in the spring to fight for these reforms again. Growth in and around Chicago is counting on them.